Winterwind Tales, Part 2: Superstition
2315.Q3.M1
Bodies in the throes of anguish, a mish-mash of limbs and phaser fire, stones and glittering knives. A metallic tang in the air, not that of ozone, but something far more primal.
Chaos and Blood.
That's what Demari Iekn beamed into.
One of his security enlisted, a Yrillian by the name of Ozaw, was grappling with not one, but two huge Caldonians, screaming bloody murder as they held him down. One produced a pair of clippers, trying to shave the hair off his body.
Iken stared longer than he should have, hearing their thoughts. It was all coldly logical, despite the fact they were convinced that Yrillian hair was a vital component to chemistry; that his lungs would be useful for research into enhancing artificial and biological intelligence.
Someone tackled Iekn to the ground.
It was Xolten, blood leaking from an impact on his head. A brick smashed against a wall , right where Iekn's head had been.
"Help Ozaw!" he yelled, fumbling for his phaser pistol. Xolten didn't hesitate. For a split second Iekn thought he heard what might have been a growl from the Vulcan's throat, and prayed he never would hear that noise again. Xolten tensed like a tiger and lept, tackling the Caldonian who had produced a knife for organ harvesting. They went sliding into a fruit stand, and Iekn lost sight of them. He fired a quick shot instead at the remaining Caldonian holding down Ozaw, missed and blew out a streetlamp, fired again. This time he caught the huge alien right in the chest, and his target fell as if he were dead.
Xolten rose up from the fruit stand, spiky fruits splattering where they fell. He had the Caldonian in a chokehold. A knife buried to the hilt stuck out of the Vulcan's side. Iekn didn't hesitate to shoot the restrained Caldonian rather than waiting for nature to take its course.
Xolten stumbled a few steps forwards before his legs gave out, Ozaw reaching out to grab him.
"I believe I am wounded." The Vulcan commented, deadpan.
"Of course it takes getting stabbed for a Vulcan to make jokes," Ozaw said, his voice cracking half-way through.
"It's a statement of fact." Color was draining from Xolten's face, "I have always enjoyed gallows humor." He rasped, "I did not think an opportunity to use it would ever be this appropriate."
"Nuub's sake," Iekn muttered, "Iekn to
Winterwind, lock onto Ozaw and Xolten and beam them directly to sickbay." He scanned around, gesturing at security officers who looked unhurt to help wounded.
The two men swirled away, the rest of his security party fanning out, finding the injured, civilian or Starfleet, and helping them back to the beam-in site.
"Taggart to Iekn. What's the situation?"
"As that last command might have indicated, not good." Iekn reached out and pulled a security officer down. The man looked at him quizzically, until a disruptor blast burned over him, exploding the wooden wall in a shower of flaming debris. "We're going to need fire crews down here, and an enhanced security response team, stat. Helmets, protective vests, the works." A block away a building exploded with a concussive whump, and Iekn's team was pelted with fist-sized chunks of concrete. "Maybe bring heavy weapons too!"
On the bridge, Taggart rubbed her forehead, as a swarm of security personnel bustled around her. "That will take time. What is the status of the rest of the senior staff?"
Iekn's voice hissed from the arm of her chair, and she could hear her comms officer tapping furiously to keep up with the attempts to jam them."We lost contact with Kader, Omirri, and Tarkam's team. th'Endev is pinned down at the dam. Xolten is in the care of Dr. Rr'mera, who's with you."
"Acknowledged." Taggart held out a hand and a security officer handed her a phaser pistol, fully charged, "You find Omirri, and I'll take a team to the dam--"
"No!
No. Captain, respectfully, I know you Ee-Cee types love to handle things personally, but I almost got brained the instant I beamed down. The rest of the staff is scattered. You've gotta remain there to coordinate while we hold the line, or we're going to lose a
lot of people."
Taggart ground her teeth together, gripping the armrest, before handing back the pistol. "I'm going to state this because you're out of range, Iekn, but I feel like a
coward sitting here."
"The crew won't see it that way if you pull them out of the fire."
"Noted. Stay safe, Commander."
"Man, you and Xolten should have a comedy act." He grumbled in response, "Iekn out."
Taggart turned in her chair to look at a Saurian with the rifle-green of security. "Lieutenant Okeg." He blinked one large eye at her, and then the other. "With Xolten out of the fight, his Security duties fall to you. We've lost a lot of fine people down there already, and this ship's security team is too small to corral this. I want you to go down, secure our people, and dig in."
He straightened, "Yes, ma'am!"
Taggart turned back to the status map on her viewscreen, "And since I can't do it personally, let them know how almighty pissed Abigail Taggart is."
***
The Sunspot Grill was a two-story structure, a humble but successful business that was popular with the local community, bordered by two streets whose names translated as roughly "Pleasant" and "Beautiful."
For Rana Kader, hiding on the second floor, those names were a bitter joke now. Tarkam's body was in the corner, covered by a blanket. The head of the quick-witted Rigellian Cigrad sat next to it, covered by a napkin. Ensign sh'Koltet cowered in the opposite corner, far away from the windows, the stump of her arm sealed with some dermal regeneration that Kader had administered with shaking hands. Several minutes ago, sh'Koltet's arm had come flying through the window, in a hail of glass that had blinded Chief Wenaya. The Orion sat next to sh'Koltet, his eyes covered and heavily sedated. Kader had wrapped sh'Koltet's arm in a blanket and put it in a refrigeration unit. There was little else she could do.
They'd been a team of seven. Obe, Cigrad, and Tarkam had all met bloody ends. The only woman left standing other than Kader was Omirri, the nervous helmswoman covering the only staircase up to the second floor. In her talons she had three separate phaser pistols and a communicator flipped open, hoping to hear the Winterwind break through. So far, nothing, jamming so bad it must have scrambled their transport signatures too. Every so often, a Caldonian would peek their head around the corner, and Omirri would let loose with all three phasers, two set to an intimidating but mostly-harmless high heat that kicked up sparks and the other set to stun. She'd managed to clip one Caldonian with the stun, and swat back a stun grenade that had earned them some breathing room when it blinded the mob downstairs.
Also every so often, out of sight, a Caldonian would fold their long legs and then leap up into the air, to slam hands on the remaining windows, throwing sticks and other debris through the broken ones. Kader had almost been hit square in the face when a more talented Caldonian leaped up all the way up and flung a wooden pole at her. The next time she'd jumped into view, Kader had hit her with a stun blast, and tried not to be pleased when she'd heard the vague crunch of bone from her hard landing. It was lucky, too, because that second time, the Caldonian didn't have a wooden pole. She had a disruptor.
Ever the Starfleet officer, she still tried diplomacy, "Listen!" She screamed out the window, "We're not here to inject you with mind-control vaccines or contaminate your crops with gene sequenced food. We didn't even distribute that stuff!"
"LIES!" Is all that greeted her, along with a hail of missiles through the windows.
"I'm serious! We don't mean you any harm, we just want to leave!" Nothing but jeers and hissing from the crowd.
"They're not going to listen to reason, Kader," Omirri chirped lowly.
Kader slid down behind the overturned table that was her cover. "Yeah. Worth a shot."
"What if we didn't give them reason?" Omirri said. The windows rattled and Kader fired a snap shot out them, before she peeked up to look at Omirri, "Kader, they're science-based but… I
speak their language. You get me? Outsiders, who feel left out because they believe something different."
"Are the Fiiral normally this murderous?" Kader said, bitterly. She sighed as she heard Omirri give her an annoyed whistle, "Hey, go for it. If we wait around they're going to get ladders or something and then we're really in the shit."
sh'Koltet whimpered.
"Um," Omirri said, "Excuse me. Excuse me!" She puffed up as she sucked down a huge lungful of air and let out a high pitched screech that temporarily blocked out the sounds from below, "My name is Omirri. I'm a Fiiral. My people believe in things that others think is silly, or wrong, too." She stopped, waiting for a reaction from the crowd, "Uh, look it up?"
Omirri dipped her head in consternation and even Kader winced. No one could look up anything if they were being jammed.
Then, a glimmer of hope. "We have looked up your species, Fiiral. I'm interested - what about you?" A ragged cheer went up from the crowd.
Kader and Omirri looked at each other, Kader's eyes wide. They must have had some sort of local network. Which meant…
"I want to talk about it." Omirri said, "I want to talk about it! Will you please let me speak?"
"Omirri!" Kader whispered.
In response, Omirri slid two of the phaser pistols across the floor back at Kader and descended the steps. She tucked one of the phasers out of sight under her feathers, curling the opposite arm underneath as well.
She stepped out into the street, and instantly was surrounded by the towering figures of the Caldonians. In their hands she saw various tools -- hammers, butcher's knives, carpentry saws -- covered in blood. In other hands, more obvious tools of war, rifles and pistols stolen from the armory. Or turned over by a traitor?
And in a few hands, personal tablets. Omirri tried not to eye them too hard as the crowd parted just enough to let her through, claustrophobically towering above her. Towering above her like... angry, knife-wielding trees.
Her passage through this forest of anger seemed to last an eternity, but was more like three or four quick steps, until she reached something of a clearing. One of the Caldonians stood there, an energy rifle in one hand, a tablet in the other. He sneered down at Omirri.
"Says here your people believe in sky-gods and spirits." He sneered down at Omirri, "I don't see how you think you're at all comparable to us. We have facts and knowledge to back our beliefs."
"Mhm," Omirri said. Only one gamble to take, "You see, like you, the facts have been suppressed by the so-called establishment." She gestured to the assembled crowd, "My gods are scientifically falsifiable, and the SNAKES in our government refuse to believe us!"
There was a murmur of shock and surprise. A Caldonian raised a hammer, threateningly, his whole arm shaking with rage.
"It's true," Omirri said. "Here, give me that tablet, sir."
The leader narrowed his eyes, slowly extending his hand, clutching the thin yellow-gold square of the tablet protectively. Omirri grasped it and pulled, but the Caldonian held onto it before abruptly letting go, sending Omirri skidding back to jeers.
All or nothing now, Omirri thought, as she made a show of studying it. Then, dramatically, she turned and flung the tablet. It spun, a shimmering golden disk in the smoke-filtered light, before crashing through a second floor window. The crowd shouted in disbelief, and the Caldonian behind grabbed her roughly by the shoulders.
"Th-the facts don't exist on that!" Omirri said, twisting from his grasp. A few feathers painfully tugged out of her skin. She held out two talons, "They exist here." She pressed the center of her chest, where her liver was, "They exist in your spirit-box. They exist in what you see in the world. You've seen the facts on the ground and what does the directorate do? Nothing!"
Some in the crowd cheered.
"The same goes for me. I see the hand of my God in the thousand coincidences in the world. Like you see the threat of protein sequences in your food while the directorate ignores the data you've found here in reality, not in an academic's spreadsheet!"
More in the crowd voiced their approval. The Caldonian leader reached down and tapped Omirri in the center of her face, pushing her back a little, "Prove it, Fiiral."
"Th-the point is," Omirri said, "It's not something that can be pro--"
"YOU INSULT US!" The Caldonian screamed, slamming his riflebutt into the ground and towering over Omirri, "Our claims can be proven! We have used charged mineral lattices to manipulate the energy fields of our wounded. One recovered from a vile wasting disease. Documented! Fact! And yet we our laughed at. Why don't you document your claims of Godhood the same way?" He bared his teeth in a grin, "Ask your gods to strike me down here."
The audience roared its approval.
"My gods are not the strike with lightning type," Omirri said demurely, backing away slightly, "It is a will that requires… b-big data to analyze." She stammered the last as the crowd closed in on her. "Do y-you happen to have a supercomputer near by?" She just prayed she'd bought Kader and the rest enough time.
"Hit me." The Caldonian leader said, unexpectedly. He leaned down to stare Omirri in her eyes, "If your gods work by coincidences, they should be able to make a species so often resoundingly defeated in close combat best a man who's studied the combat forms, whose body is free of toxins and
lies." He straightened, the rifle in his hand now casually aimed at her chest.
Omirri took a deep breath. She tensed, trying to remember everything Omirid had taught her. Her only hope was to jump straight up and plant a foot in this guy's forehead. Probably, she'd die before her feet left the ground.
The Caldonian's sneer disappeared as he jerked suddenly. Omirri's eyes widened as his grip tightened on the firing stud of the rifle, but it shorted out with a soft
pop. The Caldonian collapsed to the ground, almost crushing Omirri as he pitched forward. She dodged backwards with an alarmed squawk.
Another Caldonian ran over to him, pressing a finger into his neck. "He's unconscious!" she shouted.
Then she jerked before collapsing, too.
"HA!" Omirri screeched, jabbing a talon at the shocked faces of the crowd, "HA HA HA! HA! THE SPIRIT IS
REAL!" She turned and sprinted right back into the Grill, as the surprised Caldonians panicked, some rushing to the aid of their god-struck comrades, others crambling backwards, tripping over themselves to get away from Omirri's as she zipped by them. She took the stairs two at a time and tripped on the last, tumbling back onto the second floor with a crash.
sh'Koltet had a phaser pistol aimed at her and dropped it with relief.
Kader blinked at Omirri from where she was standing by the window. In her hand was a phaser pistol, a mish-mash of objects attached to the front of it. "So, not to let you down," She said, "But that was me with a beam diffractor I managed to cobble together." She wiped sweat off her brow, "Cut down the visibility. Any darker out and it would have been obvious."
Omirri hooted disappointedly from where she was sprawled on the floor, "Aw."
"Security's on the way. Way easier to hack that single tablet then their local network. I managed to contact the Winterwind with some quick thinking. And it saved your skin too -- when you threw it up here it bounced off a door and skidded into a backroom that was full of electronics. If it hadn't bounced that way I never would… have… found them." Kader just blinked. Blue swirls appeared in the street below, as helmeted security personnel appeared around the building. But the Caldonians were for the most part dispersed already, running away for dear life.
Her face pressed against the cool stone of the floor, Omirri wheezed out a whistle of pleasure.
"The Spirit
is real."
